Your opinion on personal use?

[SabaothMastema]

How do feel about the practice of using unoriginal mesh or other items for personal? Example: you upload a car from Saints Row exclusively for your own uses. You never sell it only keep it in your inventory.

[Codex Alpha]

The problem would be how would LL and Second Life be able to extend you a license, and safely use the content you upload, without possibly infringing themselves then;

2.3 You grant Linden Lab certain licenses to your User Content.

"In connection with Content you upload, publish, or submit to any part of the Service, you affirm, represent, and warrant that you own or have all necessary Intellectual Property Rights, licenses, consents, and permissions to use and authorize Linden Lab and users of Second Life to use the Content in the manner contemplated by the Service and these Terms of Service."

- Terms of Service

It would be the same if I uploaded textures that were licensed for me to be used by Stockphoto, but I cannot use them in Second Life because I dont actually own the works - and SL needs me to own what I upload to extend to me the proper license to use it within their TOS.

It's usually best for everyone involved to just upload things you have created yourself, or have the license to use, on the Second Life platform.

However, you can enjoy freedom in that department by installing OpenSim, and running it on localhost on your computer, and you can upload and enjoy anything for 'personal use' with no worries.

[SabaothMastema]

In my specific case I only use Creative Commons stuff. I am really using this query as a way to get a baseline opinion

[Codex Alpha]

I was responding in the context of your example;

 

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SabaothMastema wrote:

Example: you upload a car from Saints Row exclusively for your own uses.

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I'm unaware of any Saints-Row items that are creative commons.

A Creative Commons- licensed item may be fine, as long as that license allows you. That's the part of "You are the owner or have a license to use" part of the TOS.

[Bree Giffen]

My opinion? I really could care less if someone were to do this. 

[Qie Niangao]

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entity0x wrote:I'm unaware of any Saints-Row items that are creative commons.

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Right, I took the OP to be asking a general question, in contrast to her own practices.

While we're on the subject: Creative Commons licenses can be extraordinarily problematic in SL (or anywhere else) if they require attribution. The license permits that restriction without further specification as to what qualifies as "attribution" -- which one might think should permit reading the name once silently and distributing freely evermore, but almost certainly doesn't. In SL, there's almost never a practical place to give attribution. Instead, I never redistribute anything CC licensed with any attribution or other restrictions. Chilling effect, amiright?

Oh, as to the OP's question: It's almost certainly grounds for legal action, to say nothing of account termination. But nobody will ever get caught doing it. As with most weapons, IP law is most effective in evil hands.

[Codex Alpha]

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Bree Giffen wrote:

My opinion? I really could care less if someone were to do this. 

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Be careful of your own listing practices, because it may reflect your own opinions on the matter, in respect to the following;

"Branded items may be listed or sold only by the brand or intellectual property owner or its authorized agents"

"Misspelling brand names or adding, removing, or swapping some characters to try to circumvent the rules, for example, using the number "1" instead of the letter "I" or a dollar sign "$" instead of the letter "S," is not allowed."

- Market Listings Guidelines - Branding Guidelines

Opinions don't really matter, we don't want the OP or anyone else to get into trouble, do we?

 

[Amethyst Jetaime]

My personal opinion is that the mesh must be Public Domain for you to import into SL due to the TOS.  Creative Commons isn't sufficient IMO due to the necessary requirement to attribute the original creator.

It matters not if it's for personal use or not, unless the license actually states different terms for personal use as opposed to commercial use.  What matters is the terms of the license you have.

[Ilithios Liebknecht]

This isn't really a matter of opinion. It's very clear cut. You are allowed to do with models exactly what the creator allows you to do with them. If the model has a license, you are allowed to do with it what the license allows. If you do not have a license to use the item in SL, then it is illegal to do so without permission from the creator. It's that simple.

[Amethyst Jetaime]

The only opinion that you can really ask for, is what are your chances of being caught.  Frankly, not much.  However there have been people that have been that never expected it and were sued.

Ask yourself is the risk, albeit small, worth the expense of being sued?  Wouldn't it be better to contact the creator and ask for permisison?

[SabaothMastema]

Well really I am just getting a public consensus on the matter. Personally I see nothing inherently wrong with the practice. So long as there is no money changing hands.

Limitations of creative commons however does present a rather large problem for quite a few merchants. Particularly the ones who sell weapons designed after their real world equivalent. That in quite a few instances is just as much IP infringement as someone selling a beanie baby mesh on the marketplace.

[Persephone Emerald]

It's against the law to J-walk, but there are times one can do it without getting in trouble.

According to the SL TOS, we need to have the legal right to use any mesh or texture we use in SL.

Practically speaking though, using a mesh or texture for your own use & not tryng to resell it is unlikely to get you in trouble.

When using someone else's mesh or texture, read their TOS rules carefully to avoid getting in trouble.

[Chic Aeon]

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Amethyst Jetaime wrote:

My personal opinion is that the mesh must be Public Domain for you to import into SL due to the TOS.  Creative Commons isn't sufficient IMO due to the necessary requirement to attribute the original creator.

It matters not if it's for personal use or not, unless the license actually states different terms for personal use as opposed to commercial use.  What matters is the terms of the license you have.

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I agree. 

 

For anyone actually striving to be within the Linden Lab TOS, Creative Commons does not qualify. There were many discussions with RL lawyers about this during the dreaded rewriting of the TOS a couple of years ago (maybe three as we are getting near August again).  See the text earlier in this thread for those that didn't live through those times.

 

The idea that just because a item is not being SOLD there is no copyright infringement is completely wrong in the United States. A bit of research will show you that. I wrote a long article on Google Plus about this but won't paste in. The point is --- do your homework and don't just ASSUME that it is OK -- and please don't advise folks to do so (not aimed at the OP). The pratice of uploading others work  might be OK on another platform and might possibly be OK in a country outside the United States as laws differ including copyright laws, BUT Second Life is a US based platform owned by a US based company.

 

All that being said there are tons of things uploaded and SOLD (still) in Second Life.  That doesn't make it right or legal .

[Chic Aeon]

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Ilithios Liebknecht wrote:

This isn't really a matter of opinion. It's very clear cut. You are allowed to do with models exactly what the creator allows you to do with them. If the model has a license, you are allowed to do with it what the license allows. If you do not have a license to use the item in SL, then it is illegal to do so without permission from the creator. It's that simple.

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Even if you HAVE the permission of the creator, unless the creator has given away ALL his rights ("I give this model to the pubic for public domain use") it would STILL be illegal to upload to SL because of the TOS. 

[Chic Aeon]

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SabaothMastema wrote:

Well really I am just getting a public consensus on the matter. Personally I see nothing inherently wrong with the practice. So long as there is no money changing hands.

Limitations of creative commons however does present a rather large problem for quite a few merchants. Particularly the ones who sell weapons designed after their real world equivalent. That in quite a few instances is just as much IP infringement as someone selling a beanie baby mesh on the marketplace.

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There are several levels of Creative Commons liscenses. Many require that you list the maker as the maker with your work. The broadest Creative Commons 0 I believe it is called, is pretty much the same as Public Domain and that MIGHT be OK for SL (hasn't been tested that I know of).  But in most Creative Commons items the owner does not relinquish his creative ownership -- he simply shares freely. So that doesn't conform to the current TOS verbage.

[Ilithios Liebknecht]

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SabaothMastema wrote:

Well really I am just getting a public consensus on the matter. Personally I see nothing inherently wrong with the practice. So long as there is no money changing hands.

Limitations of creative commons however does present a rather large problem for quite a few merchants. Particularly the ones who sell weapons designed after their real world equivalent. That in quite a few instances is just as much IP infringement as someone selling a beanie baby mesh on the marketplace.

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Well ok, so you see "nothing inherently wrong" with doing something illegal. There are those who would disagree with you.

Why do you say the limitations of Creative Commons licenses create a problem, while you presumably have no problem with using things that are just outright stolen with no license at all?

 

Chic Aeon - Being against TOS does not make something illegal. But good point that even if you were to get the legal right to use the model, it could still be against TOS to use it in SL.

[SabaothMastema]

Well illegal and against TOS are two very different things. The use of CC items wouldnt get me sued but it would get derendered in world.

I am not taking a hardline stance for IP infringement. Nothing ruffles my feathers more than someone selling a ripped game asset they didnt even alter. If anything I am completely against the commercial use of copyrighted material. Non commercial private use however shouldn't be so stringently persecuted. If someone is making an homage to a favorite character or whatever theybshould be allowed to so long as no laws are broken.

[Freya Mokusei]

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SabaothMastema wrote:

shouldn't

should

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Difficult words to use when discussing law. Sounds like an appeal to a morality that holds no water.

Is this "should" in an ideal world? Things aren't the way they are because that's the way they should be, never have been.

I dunno, write to your congressperson/reptile-in-a-suit? Until the law changes, precedent is clear.

[Qie Niangao]

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SabaothMastema wrote:

... If someone is making

an homage to a favorite character

or whatever theybshould be allowed to so long as no laws are broken.

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Whoa, where did this part I highlighted come from? Assuming this is about trademarked characters, the "so long as no laws are broken" describes the null set: Recognizable use of any trademarked character absolutely breaks the law, and that's totally different from a (mere) copyright violation. That's because a trademark's value is not dependent on trade of the mark itself, but rather the branding conferred by the mark.

So it's one thing to engage in personal use of a copyrighted mesh, texture, audio file, or whatever, thereby damaging the rightful owner's interests by substituting for potential sales. It's a very different thing to diminish the value of a trademark by using it without the owner's permission. I would have absolutely no patience whatsoever for "personal use" of trademarked content.